


Growing Pains

by Nyx (Astriea)



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Gen, Night Vale Community Radio, The Dog Park, the Sand Storm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-04
Updated: 2015-01-04
Packaged: 2018-03-05 08:51:14
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3113645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Astriea/pseuds/Nyx
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Dana Cardinal didn't always spend her days walking. Once she was an intern. It doesn't take that long in the dog park for those days to seem like another life. Dana isn't quite sure who she is anymore, but she knows that there has to be something she can do to change that. There has to be a way out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Growing Pains

Like most interns, and Night Vale residents who know much of interns, Dana is a firm believer in the intern curse. Which states unless you are very lucky, or just good at avoiding assignments, you are likely to fall in the service of community radio before you have served it for one year.

 

It is an easy thing to become bitter of. All interns know that they are an integral part of the clandestine operations that keep their town from being consumed by the void. The is even a tablet at city hall that says so. They receive little thanks for this besides an eulogy from Cecil and a burial of whatever part of them is left in the break room.

 

Dana is not bitter. She knew the sacrifice that she would be making when she decided to become an intern. She could just as easily be killed by the phantom buses whose huge gaping maws devoured several citizens last week. As well as Adrian, “may his sacrifice never be forgotten, he served his community well.”

 

There was a reason why there was often only one intern at a time at the station.

 

Dana had thought that it had been her turn when she, or her double, had rounded on her. She was the only intern working at the station at the time. Which made her by default, the one who was next in line for the curse. She assumed that both of them had been equally capable of destroying each other. She was just the one with the stapler.

 

After the red haze had deserted her, Cecil had been there to pry the stapler from her hands and hold her while she mourned her double. 

 

Dana was a Night Vale version of a pacifist even then. While surviving to be sixteen in Night Vale meant that you had to obtain killer instincts and be ready to use them at a moments notice, that didn't mean that you had to inflict unnecessary harm on another being that can feel it. The problem was, that like her double, most of the town didn't always view it that way.

 

Cecil had performed a minor time stalling charm in case the commercial didn't last as long as they wanted it to. They then buried her double in the intern break room with full ceremony. According to Cecil, whether she had served her community for a few months or minutes didn't matter. She had still been an intern. Dana was grateful. She had been under the same red haze as her double was an she could have just as easily been the one without the stapler. 

 

Cecil would have let her go home early that day if it wasn't for the sand storm. Instead he let her stay vigil in the break room for the rest of the show and have her first existential crisis in peace.

 

After the show, Cecil had ran into the room and almost cried when he saw that she was still safe. “I realized that devil had come here and I got so scared that he had come after you.”

 

She didn't know when her boss had also become her friend. Sometimes life gave you things to be thankful for and one should appreciate them instead of question how they came to be.

 

Two weeks later, when the dog park gates had closed behind her, she started wondering in earnest whether or not she had avoided the curse. Even though she was trapped in the dog park, she was alive, which was more than she could say for most interns that succumb to the curse. She also knew where she was and, stranger miracles had happened than someone getting out of the dog park.

 

It was that hope that had separated her from the other citizens that had been trapped. Though at first she had just seen it as a sense of purpose. “Dana,” she had told herself, “just because you are trapped here doesn't mean that you can’t do what Cecil asked and gather information.”

 

Despite the fact that she had become Dana with a question mark very early in her stay in the dog park, she still wanted to helpful to her community at large when she could.

 

Amira had been near the dog park gates when they had opened and had wandered inside. They confessed that they knew that it was unsafe. “But,” they said, “it was open, and I just wanted to know what all of the secrecy was about. The government just doesn't ban the mentioning of just anything you know.” 

 

Dana was skeptical of this line of reasoning. The city council had made Night Vale citizens call all avocados Jerry for eight weeks last year. They had only stopped when there had been a complaint from the newly formed “Jerry’s have a right to their own identity” group, had lodged a formal complaint. They had said that, “how would you like having your name be called in the supermarket, and when you turn you head, it isn't even a person who was actually being called? It was a fruit, or a vegetable, or a whatever those things are.”

 

The city council had been about to send the spokesman Jerry to the dungeon dimensions, but then they stopped. “Well, you have a point,” they said. “We didn't think of that. Sorry.”

 

Bob and Alice, a tarantula couple who had been on a date at the time of the announcement had been about to exit Big Ricos and they they had ended up here instead of the sidewalk outside of the building.

 

Zaks’ dog Trevor had ran into the park when he had taken him out on a walk and he, like many other people, had been too late getting out.

 

Dana sympathized with all of them. Like her, they were trapped here.

 

Unlike her, they didn't seem to be able to get passed that.

 

“You know, there might be a way out.” She was talking to Amira. They were standing in front of the monolith. People were soon bored enough to be drawn to anything that was not the ground of the dog park and, the message about things not being unknown called to them. They were just one news event in many. Who would care about them when time gave the illusion of passing on?

 

“What, how? Do you know if the gates will open again?” 

 

“No, I don’t think that our way out will be by the gates. Their being opened was a chance that will probably not be repeated. I was talking about the walls.”

 

“You mean those walls?” Amira pointed to the dog park walls. They looked as though they would be able to withstand a thousand armies of wronged souls. They would certainly not allow the passage of a few night vale citizens.

 

“Yes, if someone goes far enough back, then there might be a way out. It is better than staying here.”

 

“You don’t know that. There is always a chance that someone will let us out. You just have to wait for them to do that.”

 

Dana was never a fan of waiting for someone else to do things for her that she could do herself.

 

It was around this time that Dana first met The Man in the Tan Jacket. She first started taking to him because he was new. Dana was sure that he hadn't been there when everyone else was trapped. Not that anyone else seemed to notice that.

 

She didn't have the courage to ask him about that at first. It would be rude after all, and maybe he had gone deeper into the dog park soon after arriving and had just now come back.

 

Under the guise of still thinking of her self as intern Dana, she asked him about himself.

 

His name was E_____ something. He seemed disappointed that she wasn't able to memorize such details as his name and face, but he seemed to still like talking to her. Despite his reputation, she would try to text Cecil, he was quite friendly. 

 

They would sit leaning up against the dog park walls and try to tell each other things about each other. Dana would tell him about her mother and brother. He would try to tell her about his home. She would talk about her experience as an intern. He would have his flies sing her an opera in German. 

 

It was around this time that she started shaking. She needed less food here than she did before, but her body seemed to need to eat sometime.

 

E_____ started to disappear for days at a time. Dana supposed that she should be mad in some way, that he could leave while she could not. But, she knew somehow that he had lost something that she was not willing to give, to be about to move around this freely. At least he was able to bring back some food every once and a while.

 

“I think that I’m going to ask Cecil to ask his listeners to try to throw me some food over the walls.” She announced this to E_____ after she had eaten a whole can of squid and rice soup by simply upending it and gulping it down. She was still hungry.

 

“That is probably a good idea.” 

 

“I also think that it is time that I started exploring this place. It is better than staying here forever.” She didn't want to become like the other residents of the dog park. Some of them have been lying down for days now and didn't look like they were about to get up.

 

E_____ found her a few days later, eating a loaf of imaginary corn bread that had been one of the things that were thrown over the walls.

 

“Impressive,” he said. Though whether it was at the long line of marks in the dog park wall or at the fact that someone had been able to get this food to her he did not say. 

 

She then told him some of her recent findings. The same ones that she had been trying to text to Cecil all day. He told her about some of the things that have been happening in town.

 

She didn't ask him why he was here or talking to her. Yes, she could remember him more than most. But there must be someone else who he could talk to who didn't live in this place. She decided to leave it a question mark for now.

 

She soon felt like she had done nothing in her life but walk. Walk and  
mark the walls and hope. She clung on to the hope with both hands. Stranger things have happened. She just had to believe that and keep on going.

 

It got hotter, then after a while, colder. Dana didn't have anything that was suitable for winter.

 

When Dana saw the Old Oak Door, she did not wonder about what it was doing there. Well, of course she did, but that was later. She was also did not wonder until later why Cecil could suddenly talk to her now, months after constant texting on her part. The relief that was plain in his voice calmed all of the fears that she had allowed to build up.

 

She didn't know where the door would open to, but she could feel it was a step closer to home. That was what mattered, she told herself. Now she had hope.


End file.
